1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for retrieving vocabulary entries, and more particularly, to a method for retrieving vocabulary entries expressed in different languages in a mobile phone.
2. Description of the Prior Art
For enhancing competitiveness of mobile phones for sales abroad, mobile phones supporting different languages are necessary. General speaking, mobile phones supporting different languages according to the prior art have a characteristic that each language has a resource file. In other words, a mobile phone has to establish a number of language resource files for each supported language. For example, if a mobile phone supports Chinese, English, German, French, and Russian, five languages, then the mobile phone has to establish five resource files for retrieving vocabulary entries. When the mobile phone retrieves vocabulary entries, the mobile phone first identifies what language is required, then retrieves vocabulary entries in the resource file corresponding to that language, and finally, reads data in the resource file.
According to the mobile phone supporting the number of languages to establish resource files for retrieving vocabulary entries, it is clear for a mobile phone programmer to know what languages the mobile phone supports. When a user requests adding more supported languages, the programmer only needs to establish resource files corresponding to the added languages. In the above-mention example, in addition to Chinese, English, German, French, and Russian, if the mobile phone has to support Japanese and Korean, the programmer will establish two resource files for retrieving vocabulary entries in the mobile phone. The method of retrieving entries is as said, first, identifying what language the mobile phone is operating in, then retrieving vocabulary entries in the resource file corresponding to the language, and finally, reading data in the resource file.
However, as the number of languages supported by the mobile phone increases, the management of the resource files becomes increasingly difficult. For example, if a user requests to change one of the vocabulary entries, the programmer has to change all resource files corresponding to the languages in the mobile phone. In said example, the programmer has to open the Chinese, English, German, French, Russian, Japanese, and Korean resource files, then search the to be changed vocabulary entries in the seven files. Thus, the management of the resource files is very inconvenient.